The captive and the excluded consumer: the limitations of co-production in social housing

The idea of ‘co-production’ has grown in popularity over recent years. It offers an apparently theoretically and practically useful way of conceptualising the relationship between the providers and the consumers of public... [ view full abstract ]

The idea of ‘co-production’ has grown in popularity over recent years. It offers an apparently theoretically and practically useful way of conceptualising the relationship between the providers and the consumers of public services. Essentially its exponents argued that policy-making is no longer a predominantly top-down process but that it is ‘the negotiated outcome of many interacting policy systems, not simply the preserve of policy planners and top decision-makers’ (Bovaird 2007, p. 846).

This paper examines the claims of the coproduction thesis both as an account of current trends and as a normative guide to improved public management with specific reference to social housing. It argues that the position of social housing tenants and those on social housing waiting-lists has seriously deteriorated in the UK, and to some extent in France. The former find themselves to be ‘captive consumers’ who have lost significant rights over recent years following governments’ elimination of tenure rights and weak enforcement of other consumer rights in housing. At the same the number of ‘excluded consumers’ from adequate housing, or any housing at all, has increased as governments have failed to provide adequate low-cost rented housing and left the poor to rely increasingly on under-regulated private landlords.

Consequently, the paper argues that issues of power, conflict and enforceable rights are critical to understanding the relationship between government and the public service ‘consumer’. Moreover, policies in services like housing, need to be designed to provide strong, enforceable protection for the captive and excluded consumer rather than rely on goodwill and consensus-based service delivery.